How can you manage a team of more experienced employees?

Often, your team is more experienced at doing things right, which means you were brought in to ensure that right things get done 'rightly.' So you are not necessarily there to tell them how to do their jobs but to guide them on which jobs to do, why those jobs are important, and how they fit in the process, and your overall vision for your role. When I am in these situations, I wear the hat of a project manager, driving collaboration on the project plans, timelines, milestones, and success measures. This clarifies my role on the team and why I don't need to be an expert at any of the workstreams yet allowed to take accountability actions. The team sees me as critical to their success because I keep their efforts effective.

We all have a seat on the bus, often we need to change seats for different reasons whilst staying on the bus. Knowing the industry and how it operates can lead to a more secure seat. Steering is leading and you should empower the team to take the wheel every now and again, this gains trust and gives a great insight into how we are all operating as a group. People who lead and become leaders are not ones that boss or manage or micromanage. No one excels while being micromanaged. Value comes from listening to you’re team, gain an insight into how the group can operate together in a more structured yet adaptable way. Make everyone feel valued.

Leadership when managing professionals is about becoming an effective sounding board for ideas and collective problem solving to take an organisation forward. Its important to give control as a leader and then spend time shaping organisational clarity, this may be through shared vision and values that encourages behaviour that drives innovation 💡 🙂

Managing a team of more experienced employees requires a delicate balance of leadership qualities. First and foremost, it's essential to cultivate a culture of respect and open communication, acknowledging the wealth of knowledge and expertise your team members bring to the table. Effective delegation, clear goal-setting, and leveraging their strengths for the benefit of the team are key aspects of managing a team of more experienced employees. In this dynamic environment, your role as a manager is to facilitate collaboration, provide direction when needed, and create an environment where their expertise can shine, ultimately driving the team towards achieving its goals.

One area I try to focus on when leading a team is to gain the trust of the team. I try to create transparency where possible, and I taylor my communication style and mentorship approach to each individual team member. By gaining the trust of the team and helping them solve challenging problems with unique insights, it helps build credibility. Being a leader isn’t about having more knowledge or experience than the team you lead. If you can identify the strengths and competencies of each team member, recognize them and find ways to maximize these strengths, it will empower your team to elevate their performance for their own success and the team’s success.

With experienced employees, we need to set the expectations clearly. Without it,they will assume that other than designing and coding everything else is Manager's job. For my team members, I always set the right expectations and clearly mentioned that, they are pretty independent and set the expectations on what they need to communicate, how often they need to communicate and what is their responsibility. I have helped them to provide guidance on process expectations based on how things are going.

By realising that you are an equal part of the team until a leader is needed. That is your role is not telling them what to do but trusting them to do a good job and being an aid to that. Your role will kick in when they need clarity, guidance, support (even when not asked - depends on their personalities whether this would be appreciated or not, so realising when as well), when there are conflicting views in the team, promoting the team's and individuals' contribution etc.

Sometimes you have a clear vision from upper management, sometimes there isn't one and you're brought there to create one. Realize that your role as a leader is to fill any gaps in the vision that the organization has. I see too many young leaders struggling to make sense of vague directives given from their manager, without taking time to understand it, challenge it and finally adapt it to your team's needs.

Before you can begin to share a vision for the team, it’s important to first gain trust and credibility with the team, otherwise it will be that much more challenging to get their buy-in of the vision. I try focus on being candid about potential challenges to achieve the vision, but highlight the benefits of it to get the team excited about how the vision will positively impact them. Generally, having a vision means changes will be required to achieve that vision, and the leader’s primary goal is to manage that change to maintain process and reduce risk through the change.

Each team member will always have something to contribute for their departments' overall goal and companies' overall mission and vision. In my experience it's important to articulate during day to day work about your unit's vision and how you are aiming to contribute companies bigger vision and how key members are capable to contribute via connecting several dot in this journey. A purpose driven work culture is uttermost important and more experience team members can easily connect with this theme and can contribute in this journey.

Treat them as a council of advisors, rather than seeing them as subordinates, see them as partners who can help you make better decisions and lead the team more effectively. Utilise them as a mentor to help uplift less experienced resources.

Delegate responsibilities and tasks, giving team members the autonomy to use their expertise to complete assignments. Trust their judgment and avoid micromanagement. Everybody hates micromanagement but senior employees hate it the most (and need it the least!)

Let more experienced employees leverage their expertise, accomplishments, and diverse experiences. As a leader, understanding that their professional journey is further along compared to younger team members goes a long way in maximizing the value that exists. Communicate a clear strategy for your team and how each member's advanced knowledge will impact the success of achieving collective goals. Encourage debate to gain a better understanding on how to compound team contribution. As I heard so many times, "we're all fully functioning adults." An experienced team needs a leader to remove roadblocks, provide resources to manage limitations, and provide clear direction towards interdependent goals.

Leadership style should be carefully chose so that they can have enough freedom for their day to day work. Balancing companies SOP and employee's creative flavor needs to be encouraged. They should not be micro-managed rather delegated task. A any time point they should not feel that their full potential is not getting used within the team.

I agree, the most experienced team members have historical knowledge about the company. They understand how things have been done and probably have a list of things that they want to change. Ask them about the pain points to the company operations and those specific to their daily tasks. You can build their trust by finding solutions to these pain points first. Doing so will build morale and benefit the organization.

Feedback is a gift and if this is from a more experience team member then it is indeed a precious gift. Create a work environment where team members can freely share their open and honest feedback. See in what format ( 1 to 1, small group or larger group) your experience team members is comfortable to share their feedback. If the feedback is not clear to you request to examples for their feedback. Then make sure- to appreciate them for sharing their feedback and turn those points into feedforward.

Highly experience and competent employee is an asset for the team and also for the organization. Create a open and honest communication method where you can see how your support can help them to grow. Offer them assisted SOWT analysis, help them to connect with cross-functional and cross-boarder colleagues who can be helpful for them for any career guidance.

Recognize that experienced employees may still seek opportunities for growth and development. Offer training, mentorship, and chances to lead or contribute to special projects so they don't feel saturated (and in effect bored!) Keep them stretched, challenged and engaged. Encourage a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing within the team. This could involve cross-training or setting up peer learning sessions. More senior employees could mentor, train, coach junior employees.

Involve your team in decision-making processes, especially when their expertise is relevant. Collaboration can lead to better-informed decisions and greater buy-in, and it can also help you as the manager. Soundboarding ideas and collaborating on business management tasks (E.g. team strategy, business plan, business reviews etc.) can offer the employees the stretch opportunities they are needing and free up some time for you!!

It’s almost always the case that there are more “experienced” people in your teams than the leader — either in some specific areas or across a broad range. That’s ok. They know you have less experience and they know that’s ok if you empower them, listen to them and authentically lead them. The most important point for me is to not ignore that fact and to not pretend it doesn’t exist. Recognise and celebrate that your staff bring so much rich, useful experience. Take the time to understand individuals and individual experiences. Use that collaboratively to benefit the whole team.

Leadership not Management I think the headline is wrong, managing a team of experienced colleagues would be very back footed and won’t fulfil the team’s potential. If you lead these colleagues then your team’s potential is limitless. If you’re running this team then you’re likely to have been put in that position because your point of difference is leadership. Everyone needs a goal and leading them towards that goal is a skill not all people have. Use their experience but also temper their ideas as required. Just because Bob or Jane are experienced doesn’t mean that their 250 year old spreadsheet is the way ahead. Lead, empower, delegate, temper and be ready to have those difficult conversations. Lead don’t just manage.

Remember you get what you give: if you provide an environment of trust and empowerment (walking the talk!), you will see that your experienced expert teams will go the extra mile without even being asked…

What I beleive is essential to both team and individual achievement in this area is the create a partnership with those more experienced colleagues. Respect the level of experience and knowledge they bring as well as their ability to maintain and grow relationships with clients. Have them share what works for them in open settings with other colleagues, set up peer to peer sharing, shadowing to build all capabilities together which will also help the business as those tenured colleagues retire to maintain high quality standards.

You must carefully intertwine each other's talents for the common good. A heterogenous group will be far more productive than a homogenous group. The interactions will be sources of knowledge for all. This will create a stronger more confident team.